At this time in these organizations time, it was essential to their futures
to boost Americans opinion of the space program. The executives of these
organizations knew how important this mission was to their success and pushed
for the mission to happen and for its employees to convince the people of the
program’s growth and success. In the direction in organizational culture, worker
empowerment was highly stressed although top management did not listen. This was
also very important in trying to prevent the Challenger disaster. Both Thiokol
and NASA asked for employees opinion on whether the launch should be a go or
were their problems that may arise. When the engineers gave their opinion that I
was to dangerous for launch, the top executives refused to listen to them and
voted to launch asking only for the top executives to vote. In Challenger’s
case, the engineers were the people who knew whether or not it would be safe for
launch. The employees of these organizations had the expertise on the
construction of the shuttle; not it’s top executives. With this matter, the
executives should have listened to the experts, instead of making their decision
based on their reputation if they were to cancel the launch.
The worker empowerment in these organization is well carried out by it’s
employees, however, it’s top executives do not hold their part of the bargain
and that is one of the many problems that led to the Challenger disaster.
Another problem with these organizations culture is the workplace ethics. At the
beginning of NASA, they stressed the importance of ethics and that is what
transformed NASA in to a successful organization. NASA was concerned for its
astronauts and the safety of the members of the organization and the world. When
the American public lost interest in the space program, NASA and Thiokol’s top
executives drifted away from safety which eventually led to the down fall of the
Challenger. Even during the Challenger day’s, it’s employees followed the
organizations ethic codes, except for their top executives. They were the people
who stressed ethic, but taught silence to their employees. An organization can
not function when its top executives are not making ethical decision and that is
what happened to Thiokol and NASA. Another key problem with Thiokol and NASA was
their decision-making. Thiokol and NASA made the worst decisions in the space
programs history, one where human lives were lost. The reason that it was a bad
organizational decision was that the information known to the organization was
sufficient enough to have cancelled the launch, in addition the organizations
knew of the technical problem years before the Challenger launch. The
organizations knew of the problem at the beginning, however, they went about
fixing the problem in the wrong way. The organizations decided that it would be
best for the organizations if they tried to fix the problem while continuing
with the launches. In this case, the organization went about fixing the problem
in a systematic approach. The organizations formed a task force and they
approached the problem in a rational and analytical fashion. The problem was not
in the task force but in the top levels of the organization. In the problem
solving process there are five steps, find and define the problem, which they
did.
